Mainstream News Coverage of Ukraine, Malaysia Flight 17 Shows Western Propaganda Machine at Work

[marmar]

(Truthout) Media analyst and professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School, Edward S. Herman, co-author with Noam Chomsky of Manufacturing Consent, discusses the propaganda embedded in US mainstream media coverage of the Ukraine crisis.

Dan Falcone: What is missing in the US mainstream news coverage of Ukraine? What major elements are being suppressed?

Edward Herman: What is missing, first of all, is a minimum of objectivity. The media are functioning more than ever as a propaganda machine for the State Department. One thing missing - and being suppressed - is the important role of neo-Nazi elements both in the Kiev government and in the forces they have fielded in their war against East Ukraine. The media are eager to find Russians in Ukraine, but will not even recognize neo-fascists staring them in the face, but working on our side. They had earlier virtually suppressed the very important role of these right-wing elements in the Maidan protests and the accompanying violence and overthrow of the elected government in Kiev. The media regularly called those forces "protesters," whereas they called the East Ukraine rebels "pro-Russian militants" and "separatists" rather than "protesters" and "federalists." The double standards here are dramatic and the sign of a propaganda system at work.

So also is the different treatment of casualties. In the Maidan street protests and fighting before the coup, the media were very sensitive to violence against the protesters, although less attentive to violence by the protesters; whereas the thousands of civilian casualties in the Kiev war against the East have been of little interest to the media, again following the party line and paralleling the attention of [US Secretary of State John] Kerry and [US Ambassador to the UN Samantha] Power. They buried the story of the Odessa massacre, which was surely of greater scope than the Racak massacre in Kosovo, which so aroused US officials and the ever-so-amenable media.

While continually stressing Russian alleged interventions, the media essentially suppress the US role in the "coup" of February 2014 and its aid to the coup government (advice, trainers, military supplies, diplomatic backing and encouragement of the IMF to aid the government). They failed to give any deeper context to Russian behavior, most notably the NATO advance toward the Russian borders and virtual encirclement of Russia and the threat this embodies to Russian national security. These suppressions are the work of a very efficient and aggressive propaganda system.

.....(snip).....

What can you tell me about the US media treatment of the destruction of the civilian airliner Malaysia Airlines Flight 17? What were the specific distortions of the matter and the purpose of the distortions? How did the shooting down of Flight 17 succeed as a case in Western propaganda? What was the immediate payoff for the United States?

This is an amazing story, with Obama, Kerry, Power and The New York Times and company, immediately and indignantly accusing the rebels and Russia of responsibility for downing the plane before any investigation had been carried out. And this was accompanied with furious accusations and with a quick retreat to silence without the presentation of any evidence supporting the US-Kiev-NATO party line by either Kiev or the United States. The Russians did quickly provide radar evidence that a Ukraine fighter plane had been in the vicinity of MH17, and that the plane had moved course into the fighting zone, but the United States gave no public evidence of satellite sightings of the target environment and apparently none to the Dutch.

Their Preliminary Report on "Crash Involving Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 flight MH17," published on September 9, 2014, almost two months after the crash, mentions no specific US input. Putin and the Russians from the beginning called for a full international investigation of the episode, but this is not going to happen: The Dutch are members of NATO, and they entered into an agreement with Kiev and several other countries to allow any of the signatories to veto any report on the subject; thus if Kiev was involved in the destruction of the plane, whether deliberately or by mishap, this will never show up in an international inquiry. The media have of course ignored this agreement and Samantha Power was indignant that the Russians did not find the ongoing investigative process all that could be desired. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26711-mainstream-news-coverage-of-ukraine-malaysia-airlines-flight-17-shows-western-propaganda-machine-at-work-edward-s-herman

[Fred Sanders]

1. Propaganda is what the American media does, it is not really even media anymore, it is a tool of

imperialism and capitalism.

If you believe the Republicans are congenital liars, which they are, how do you think they get away with it so regularity and easily?

On topic more, the overthrow of an elected government.....totally ignored. Amazing.